Mauve Blemish
by Hawkflight7
Summary: ...the oil becomes tainted, cursed; it will overflow and the brush will fall... Soulmate!AU


**Mauve Blemish**

 **Summary: ...** _ **the oil becomes tainted, cursed; it will overflow and the brush will fall...**_ **Soulmate!AU**

 **For the Soulmate AU [Challenge] on the RWBY Fic Review Exchange and Writing Challenges forum.**

Fold in quarters or roll. That was her dilemma right now.

Weiss looked down at the outfits she had gathered onto the bed, the ones she had picked for her flight to Beacon. She had separated them into categories: undergarments, pajamas, combat dresses, a jacket, some stockings, and an extra pair of heels.

Now she just had to figure out how to fit them into her suitcase. The other suitcase already had Myrtenaster in it, along with extra containers of dust. She had even more of the vials in a small carry-on as well. With train cars of dust getting stolen recently and all the robberies going on in Vale she wanted to make sure she didn't run out because of some petty thieves.

After a second more of deliberation she picked up a dress and straightened it out on her mattress before rolling it. That way there wouldn't be any obvious folds that she would need to get out later - since none of her butlers were coming with her, she would have some assistance for getting her bags to her dorm room, but that was it. Apparently her father couldn't even spare her one of their servants for her stay at Beacon. It was obviously one of the ways he was getting back at her for choosing a different academy to go to.

She set the rolled up fabric in her suitcase and began to do the same with her other dresses, humming to herself as she did so. It was finally happening. She was going to be able to leave this house and get away from her father and his influence. No one would tell her when she could or couldn't go out, demand that she take five hour piano lessons. She would be able to control her own time-frame. If she wanted to split her time between classes, piano, studying, and making new friends she could do it. She would even have other people her age to talk about their soulmates, who they imagined them to be, when they might meet, point at a funny-looking soulmark and laugh. Because one's soulmark didn't always 'fade in' in a practical manner.

It was common knowledge that you could paint - or draw - an image to look like something else entirely while working with a brush - or pencil - but then the image became clear at the end. While it was a guessing game the rest of the time. Sometimes it was funny, other times it was... unethical to say the least.

She was rather grateful that her own soulmark - that had appeared at age five - was rather straight forward. No one could mistake it for anything else, unless they were simply trying to mess with her. The mark above her right eye had clearly been the outlines of a feather when it first appeared, purely skeletal at best, but in time it began to fill out, adding the little details. It tingled each time a new line was drawn on, and something akin to a wave of comfort would come over her each time.

It was part of why she had fought so hard against that Grimm possessed armor, for her freedom. She didn't have much chance of finding her soulmate if she stayed here after all, even though the legends say soulmates were fated to find each other. That was all fairy tales. She needed to get out to find him, and Beacon was a great opportunity for so many other reasons as well.

Weiss smiled as she placed the last dress inside, then folded her jacket to put on top of them. She would roll the pajamas as well, everything else could be folded, the undergarments slid in along the sides, heels tucked up into the mesh at the top.

She went to reach for one of her periwinkle sleeping gowns when a swift sting struck her above her right eye. Weiss yelped, hands flying to rest on her mark. It felt like a bee had just stung her there, though she didn't recall hearing one buzzing around.

With a frown she slowly lowered her hand, screaming a moment later when the pain came back a trillion-fold and she fell onto her side as the right side of her forehead _burned_. It was stinging anymore, it felt like her mark was being stabbed in each individual tenth of a centimeter that covered her skin. Like the blade was trying to carve itself into her skull.

Weiss was gasping on the floor, spasms running through her body with each strike of the invisible blade as she clawed at the ground, pushing herself around the corner of the bed where her full-length mirror stood. Something was happening to her mark and she was desperate to see it, to know what was going on. She turned her head, and nearly slapped her hand over her mouth.

The feather was no longer clear-cut, but snapped into pieces, missing little details here and there since she had yet to turn eighteen. The silver-gray complexion had turned to a dark silver, and in between the pieces of the feather thin purple lines were appearing, first following the veins on her forehead before branching out at irregular angles. It was creating a web, her skin going dark between the lines, patches of grey, silver, and black tinged purple. A silver-esque highlight was being drawn along the edges of what remained of her soulmark and she burst into tears seconds before the door to her room opened.

"Little snowflake?" She could barely make out the words spoken to her even as the pain began to fade, nothing more than a passing phantom. "What is-Oh, dear."

She could see Klein drop to his knees next to her, brushing the hair away from her forehead that had fallen over her soulmark. A stark blemish on her pale skin. "He-he's d-de-ad," she hiccuped repeatedly when she tried to speak, catching sobs in her throat only for them to burst out a moment later.

"Shh, shh." Klein gently rubbed her back as she cried. "You don't know that."

"But it hurt!" she half yelled, half sobbed into the palms of her hands. What else could have happened to change her mark so drastically?

There was a second of silence before Klein spoke, clearly trying to comfort her. "He doesn't have to be. Maybe it was just an accident. Sometimes these things happen, where the mark gets it wrong. He could be in a hospital after an accident, being taken care of in the extensive unit." It didn't help, not really. She couldn't stop the tears even with the possibility that her soulmate could be hanging on the edge of death, that he could tip over at any second. Weiss threw herself into Klein's side, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as she cried even harder.

She felt a soft pat on her back. "My little snowflake. It's okay. It's going to be okay."


End file.
